


remembered like storms and droughts

by someotherstorm (rumbrave)



Category: Justified
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-06
Updated: 2012-11-06
Packaged: 2017-11-18 02:06:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rumbrave/pseuds/someotherstorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The grave may take your sins, but prison takes everything else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	remembered like storms and droughts

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to norgbelulah and thornfield_girl for reading this over! ugh, Dickie Bennett, i have so many complicated feelings about you. title from the drive-by truckers song _birthday boy_.

**remembered like storms and droughts**

* * * 

In prison they call him _Richard_.

The bag they’ve marked for his belongs has that name on it, written on the side in thick black marker.

 _Richard Bennett_. 

When he puts his things in it, it’s like they belong to someone else. 

He forgets about the gloves but they make him take those off, too. The sight of them in the bag makes him angry. They don’t belong to Richard Bennett. They’re _his_. 

The forced cool air feels strange on his bare fingers. They flex and move in nervous twitches, wanting somewhere to hide. 

* * *  
His mama goes in the ground on a dreary Thursday afternoon, right next to his daddy. They tell him half the county showed up to pay their last respects, measured in solemn faces and low-cast eyes. 

No talk of Black Pike after the burial, just her Apple Pie and her rich tenor voice, and the old ones clucking their tongues and saying _remember when she was beautiful?_

Alive, his mama ran that county like a tyrant. In the ground she’s a saint. _There ain’t no sins the grave can’t forgive, son,_ she used to say to him. He guesses she must be right. 

He thinks about his family, nothing now but stones all lined up in a row. When he was little they’d go to the cemetery and put flowers on his daddy’s grave. 

_Why, Mama, ain’t like he can see them._

_Ain’t for him, Dickie. It’s for us, so we remember. Hush now._

There’s no one gonna go put flowers on their graves, not with Dickie in prison. So if that’s true -- his mama ain’t the kind of woman you forget, and Dickie’s still sore about Doyle but Coover, well, he probably ain’t long for memory. 

At night he dreams of an empty grave that’s his, a fresh pile of dirt next to it. Waiting. Sometimes he dreams he’s in it, on his back, staring up while a man with a hat throws shovels of earth at him. He wakes up before it hits his face, but somehow his mouth still tastes like dirt. 

* * *  
Dewey Crowe treats him like they’re old friends. Dewey Crowe’s problem, one of a good many, is that he thinks everyone is his friend. He’s even friends with the guy who tried to rape Loretta, Jimmy Earl. 

Dewey thinks they should be friends, too. “You know, ‘cause you both hate Raylan.” Dewey doesn’t hate Raylan because Dewey don’t hate nobody. He pretends he does, though, because he don’t want nobody to hate _him_ , neither. 

Loretta McCready’s the reason his brother Coover’s dead. Dickie remembers lying on the ground, Raylan Givens’ boot on his knee. The way he writhed and the hot shame of having to beg, the pain a living thing with teeth. 

“That fucker’s gonna end up jumped and I’m gonna piss on his grave,” Jimmy Earl says, going for cheerful and sounding mean. He holds his hand out to Dickie. “Ain’t gonna say it’s nice to see you here but. You know. Hi.” 

“Yeah, hi,” Dickie says. His fingers twitch like birds and he shakes his head, twice, his hands coming up between them. “No, I don’t think that’s … no, okay, no thank you.” The twitch is in his shoulders now, his neck. He doesn’t like how Jimmy Earl’s eyes look, like oil slicks. 

Jimmy Earl is the kind of man who only wants things he has to take. But only when he thinks the person he’s planning on taking it from is weaker. That’s how he’s looking at Dickie. Like he’s a fucking fourteen year old girl, hell. 

No one’s looked at Dickie that way in his whole life. But if he don’t stop what he’s sure is coming, that’s how everybody’s gonna look at him for the rest of it. The grave may take your sins but prison takes everything else; whatever you were on the outside is stripped away, locked up in bag with a name that ain’t yours. 

* * * 

“You shouldn’t be friends with him, man,” Dickie tells Dewey, trying to get Dewey to look at him. 

Dewey stares down at his plate of food, tasteless, colorless, bland like the people they want you to become. “Why? I mean. He’s not so bad.” Dewey gives him a sly look. “Raylan said I shouldn’t be friends with him, either.” 

Anger pricks at the edges of his restless nerves. Dickie slams a hand down on the table, making Dewey jump, spilling water on whatever the hell it is he’s eating. “Well, Dewey, I think maybe you’d have more reason to believe _me_ , me, Dickie Bennett, than Raylan.” Saying the name makes his face twist, his fingers claw at the edges of the table. “Wouldn’t you think that, Dewey, huh?” 

Dewey looks at him and shrugs, careful and slow. He picks up his tray. “I guess. Maybe. I don’t know. See you.” The way he says it makes it sound like a question, like he’s not sure.

Dickie watches him leave, eyes narrowed, leg bouncing and his fingers tapping a short, staccato rhythm on the table. 

Jimmy Earl smiles at him across the cafeteria. Dickie remembers how Jimmy Earl smiled when he showed up, asking Dickie for a job. 

It’s not the same smile. 

* * *  
If there’s one thing Dickie learned growing up, it was how to make other people fight battles he couldn’t win. 

Maybe the only lesson he ever really learned from his mama was how to say the exact thing people wanted to hear. His brother Coover was easy to talk into throwing his fists around, because his brother Coover liked to hit people and didn’t really care much why he was hitting them. 

Dickie watches for a few days, finds the men he wants and then strolls over casually in the yard to talk to them. At first they glare at him, chests puffed out like angry roosters, but Dickie knows how to use his physical size -- or lack thereof -- to his advantage, how to slightly exaggerate his limp and appear non-threatening. 

“I just thought,” Dickie says, hands raised in entreaty, “I just thought to myself, you know, okay, maybe -- maybe you ought to know what he’s been runnin’ around sayin’. That’s all. Just don’t seem _right_ is all, and I’m new around here but it just -- just don’t seem right.” He backs away, hands still raised, careful like they’re angry vicious dogs to whom he’s thrown a bone and is trying to escape without being bitten. 

It’s easier than it should be. Then again, the men might know he’s lying but Dickie chose well, and he knows it won’t matter because they won’t care. 

Jimmy Earl ain’t the only one who likes to take things. In this case, Dickie thinks, it’s different because Dickie’s just taking it _back_.

* * *  
Dickie watches while the two men take turns raping Jimmy Earl Dean in the shower. Jimmy argues at first, tells them he never said anything and the men don’t even pause, they just hit him until he doesn’t talk anymore. 

Jimmy stares at him the whole time, accusatory and then desperate in turn. 

“For Loretta,” Dickie says, but that’s not really why at all. 

When it’s over Jimmy lies on the shower floor and curls up into himself. Dickie kicks him with his bad leg, swallows the shocks of slight pain. Jimmy’s sobs rise quiet like the steam. He won’t look at Dickie. 

_That’s why._

Two weeks later Jimmy Earl is released from the prison hospital and transferred to whatever shithole town he came from. Somewhere in Tennessee, probably. Dewey looks puzzled, but Dewey sometimes looks puzzled when he turns a salt shaker over and salt comes out. 

“Well he didn’t even say goodbye,” Dewey says, blinking at this great mystery. 

“Maybe,” Dickie says, and there’s an unfamiliar sensation curving over his mouth, something he hasn’t felt in a good while. “Maybe he’ll...” he pushes at Dewey, the smile sharpening up into a grin. “Maybe he’ll... _send you a postcard_.” Dickie laughs at the look on his face. “Oh, now, Dewey -- come on now, man, you -- you got better friends than him! You’ve got _me_.” Dickie slugs him on the shoulder. “I wouldn’t just up and leave without saying goodbye, would I? Would I, no, I would not, Dewey, Dewey _Crowe_.”

Dewey gives him a confused smile. “Well...all right, that’s great, I still don’t get why you didn’t like him.” He squints at Dickie, who’s rolling his head back and forth, bouncing lightly on his toes. “Thought you would, ‘cause, you know. On account of Ray--”

“Shhh, now, shhh,” Dickie tells him, throwing a hand up and over Dewey’s mouth. He leans in close, pitches his voice low. “I am in a good mood, Dewey, let’s not go and ruin it, okay, let’s not do that. Do we want to do that? No, we do not.” 

Dewey shakes his head, eyes wide. He mumbles something against Dickie’s palm. 

“Right, right, that -- that was a good answer, friend Dewey. Don’t say that man’s name to me and we won’t have _any_ problem with my mood. Got it? Nod for me, come on, Dewey, that’s a good friend, now.” 

Dewey nods, and Dickie takes his hand away. Dewey smiles again, confusion gone. “I always thought you was so smart, back in Harlan,” he says, almost shyly. 

Dickie throws a rough arm around his shoulder. “I am smart, Dewey. I am. You just see. You just -- just wait and see, and I’ll show you, I will. You and me Dewey Crowe. You. And. Me.” 

Dewey never mentions Jimmy Earl again. It’s like he never existed, like he’s nothing but a name. A grave without flowers. 

* * *  
“You know what I think is interesting about you?” Dickie asks him, quiet, pressing Dewey against the wall in his cell. “You have this great, _amaaaazing_ trust in your own invincibility.” His fingers move over Dewey’s face, his chest, his touch light and quick like a hummingbird. “And you like everybody. You _like_ \-- you really do, Dewey, you really do -- like _everybody_.” His fingers skim over Dewey’s stomach. “How can you do that? How can you?” 

“Huh? I don’t know, I don’t like everybody. Do I? Do you think I do?” Dewey’s hands are still against the wall, palms flat, where Dickie told him to keep them. His breathing is maybe too fast and definitely too loud. 

Dickie leans in and bites at his neck, pressing closer, trapping him. Dewey is shifting against him, uncomfortable and unsure. “Shhh, now, why are you being like this? Dewey, Dewey Crowe we are _friends_ , you know, you and me -- you think I’m gonna hurt you? I didn’t hurt you last time, did I?” 

“No,” Dewey says, slow, like the word tastes funny. For people like Dewey it usually does. “I just...this is weird. Don’t you think?” 

“It’s weird, why, why?” Dickie’s eyes are closed, he’s shaking and pushing harder against Dewey’s hip. “Don’t -- don’t move your hands, you keep them there, where I told you.” 

“Okay. But it’s -- I mean this is like. Girl stuff.” Dewey clears his throat. “Isn’t it?” 

Dewey never thinks anything is anything, without asking Dickie first. “You see any girls around here, man? I don’t, I sure don’t.” 

“No, that’s what I _mean_ ,” Dewey says, uneasy. “There’s no girls. Just you and me, and that’s like...gay and stuff. Right?”

Dickie’s eyes open and he’s annoyed, Dewey is here to do what he wants, not to think things that Dickie doesn’t want him to think. “Shhh,” he says again, and his hand covers Dewey’s mouth. “Relax, just relax. You liked it, last time -- nod, tell me, remember how you liked -- liked it, okay, just remember that.” Dickie shifts so he’s rubbing against Dewey’s cock now, and Dewey’s eyes are wide and dark and confused but he’s not trying to get away. 

In a few moments, Dickie feels him nod and he smiles, kisses gently at the spot beneath his ear. “Good. Good, that’s -- see, you’re liking it, I can tell. That’s good, that’s what I want, and you like _that_ , don’t you?” 

That nod is easier, more emphatic. Dickie can feel Dewey getting hard against him, and it’s not really what he wanted but it’ll do, it’ll do just fine. “Good, now don’t....don’t talk again, you talk too much, way too much, all the time and I just want you to be quiet. Can you do that, Dewey, can you not talk for me? Not talk and not move your hands and just stay there, like this, right like this where -- where I put you, where I _put_ you, just stand still?” 

Dewey nods again and relaxes back, still and quiet, and Dickie bites at his neck and closes his eyes, drops his hand. Dickie ruts up hard against the man pinned on the wall and his hands won’t stay still, they’re moving everywhere, frantic like the push of his hips. 

Behind his eyes he sees Raylan Givens strung up in that tree, and he’s got the bat in hands. And this time Boyd Crowder never shows up and no one saves Raylan, and Raylan breaks into pieces that shatter and scream. 

* * *  
The first time it was in a barn in the late afternoon sun, the smell of hay and tobacco drifting lazy like smoke. Dickie was fifteen years old. 

The boy beneath him was just as unsure, fumbling and Dickie couldn’t look at him because when he did he heard his brother’s voice in his mind, _Why ain’t you ever talkin’ about girls, Dickie?_ and tasted panic, acrid in the back of his throat. 

So he kept his eyes closed and he pinned the boy’s hands in the hay and when he left, straw-covered and sticky and ashamed, he never saw him again. 

* * *  
There were a lot of girls when he was in high school and playing on the baseball team. Girls who overlooked the way he was always nervous or the way his hands were never still, the strange way he talked. 

He went to school dances and posed with them in pictures, let them wear his baseball jacket and they gave him fumbling hand jobs in his brother’s old Buick and smelled sweet, like flowers. 

There were boys in other towns, other counties. There was a man once, who pinned _him_ down and didn’t let Dickie close his eyes, who held his wrists and fucked him. It was the best it had ever been but it made him sick after, made him retch out of his car window and when he got home he swore he was never, ever doing it again. 

He did, but never like that. 

* * *  
Dickie met Raylan at a baseball camp one summer when they were both thirteen. Dickie was small and twitchy and he sat by himself all the time, staring at Raylan, kicking at the dirt and wondering why this boy made him feel angry and hot and nervous all at the same time. 

They weren’t on the same practice teams and they never spoke except once, when they were in line for lunch, hot dogs or something, served out of a cart with snacks and soda. Raylan was in line ahead of him, his head lowered, counting the change in his hands over and over as if he was worried it wasn’t going to be enough by the time he got up to the front. 

He also had bruises on his wrists and the faded outline of a black eye, which Dickie could see when he looked close enough. 

“Who hit you?” he asked, awkward and embarrassed, shifting on his feet. 

Raylan, tall like a colt and with none of that grace he would eventually grow into, shrugged and kicked hard at the ground, like Dickie sometimes did when his brothers made him angry or his mama yelled at him. “Don’t matter.” 

That sounded like loyalty, like he was covering up who did it and that, to Dickie, meant family. Brothers. Dickie rubbed his palms on his pants, streaked with dirt and sweat. “Got brothers, too.”

Raylan’s face screwed up tight and mean, and he glared at Dickie. “Good for you. Don’t remember askin’.” Raylan shouldered his way out of line and knocked him in the process, like an animal spooked and trying to run. 

Dickie stood there and stared at something glinting on the ground -- it was the change Raylan had been counting, over and over, like it was something precious. He’d left it lying in the dirt, just to get away from Dickie.

Dickie stood there and burned with anger and some new thing he didn’t understand -- until two years later when, burning with that same heat, he took a boy into a tobacco barn and put him on his back in the hay.

A boy who looked like Raylan. 

* * * 

That game, that horrible, awful, terrible and beautiful game. 

Dickie walked onto the mound and there he was at bat, Raylan Givens, no longer thirteen and no longer quite so gangly. Raylan, whose great-great-great-something-or-other turned in Dickie’s great-great-great-something-or-other for running moonshine, which led to a hanging and a blood feud. 

Dickie knew that about their families, because there’s no way not to in Harlan, it’s grown in the soil and brewed in his mama’s cider. But all he thought about was Raylan’s change in the dirt, the way he’d felt when Raylan left him in the line. 

The girls he took out to keep his brothers off his back, girls who laughed too loud and left him smelling like powder and hairspray, girls who his mama called weak and said they had nothing in their brains but frivolity. Dickie wasn’t sure what that was but he knew it wasn’t good, but if he dumped them to make his mama happy then his brothers got his case about him being _weird_. 

The boys he met after school, the ones he took, shaking and trembling, to old barns or his brother’s car or the woods out where nobody ever went. The taste of lust and fear, how good it felt and how awful it was after it was over. 

_Raylan’s fault. Raylan’s fault._ Dickie stood on the mound and he felt the sun in his eyes and it looked like Raylan was on fire. Dickie stared at him and waited for recognition, for something to let him know Raylan knew who he was, too. 

Raylan’s chin went up and his hands were gripping the bat, tight, like he wanted to strangle it. There was nothing on his face that said he knew him. This boy who made Dickie want things that weren’t natural, and he didn’t even _remember_ him. 

_This time, Raylan Givens,_ Dickie thought, fingers curving around the familiar weight of the ball in his glove. _This time, you’re gonna remember who I am._

Before they took him away in the ambulance, he lay on the ground while the pain bit and tore and he saw Raylan’s blood on the dirt, and that’s when he knew it would never, ever be enough. 

* * *  
When they let him out of prison -- for real, this time, not hidden in a body bag with a mentally unstable prison nurse and a crooked guard -- they take him to processing and make him wait for fifteen minutes. 

The guard comes in and throws the bag at him, cold-eyed and angry because they lost this one and Dickie won. 

“Richard Bennett?” The guard asks, like he doesn’t know who Dickie is. 

Asshole. 

Dickie grins at him and grabs the bag. “Sure,” he says, pulling on his gloves. The weight of the wool is comfortable, familiar. “Why not.” 

* * * 

Outside, the sun is warm on his face despite the chill in the air. On the way back to Harlan he stops by the cemetery, kicks his brother Doyle’s grave just because and pats Coover’s headstone. 

He stands by his mother’s grave by a few moments, shifting on his feet and thinking about what to say. 

He clears his throat, looking around to make sure no one sees him talking to dead people like some kind of loony. “I didn’t bring any flowers. But it’s all right, Mama, ‘cause you see -- you see, I’m gonna make sure they don’t forget us Bennetts. Any of us. Promise.” 

The last thing he does is walk over the undisturbed plot of the grave that’s supposed to be his. He rubs his fingers over the fading mark from Boyd Crowder’s straight razor and waits to see if he shivers, like you’re supposed to when you walk over your grave. 

He does it a few more times just to be sure. And then he dances a jig, throws his head back and laughs up at the sky when he feels nothing but the wind. 

The wind, that’s rustling through the trees and making a soft, mournful noise -- like the ghosts who walk unseen among the dead are sighing, unheeded, unheard.


End file.
